Biscuit Wedding

I was never one of those little girls that dreamed of a fairytale wedding. Whilst going through boxes of old things recently, I found one of my childhood story books: The Tough Princess. It made me smile…and explained a lot! In the story, princess Rosamund alludes betrothal to ride bikes, shoot arrows and pretty much do whatever she damn wants!

Michael and I had talked about getting married one day, and doing it in a way that was right for us. To be totally honest- a lot of the traditions around weddings had really put us off of the whole idea for a while. So when we got engaged in Autumn last year, we had a pretty solid idea of the kind of wedding we wanted to have.

We wanted it to be informal, colourful and full of joy and creativity.

Lots of wedding traditions just didn’t make any sense to us, with one of the big ones being spending the night before apart. Instead, we spent the evening at home with our cat and had a gin & tonic in bed.

I didn’t have bridesmaids, opting instead for a Best Lady (my family is part Greek and having a “Koumeres” is part of their culture) My cousin Danni has been by my side on so many important occasions and was an easy choice.

We were lucky enough to have a day of dry weather (a rarity in Scotland!) which meant we were able to have our ceremony in our back garden (plan B was our nearby town hall and reception venue)

Collaboration: we created a piece of watercolour art during our ceremony

Saying the vows that we’d written for each other, surrounded our most special friends and family (in our own garden!) is an experience that will stay with us forever.

Most importantly, we wanted to make a set of promises to each other in the presence of the people we care about the most. We knew that a religious wedding wasn’t part of that, and luckily for us Scotland is one of the few places that humanist weddings are legally binding.

Everyone climbs over fences on their wedding day, right?

Frida Kahlo inspired dream hair by Anna Wade

Behind the scenes- drinking champagne and wearing a blanket to avoid a pollen coloured dress!

While we were planning, there were times (mostly after watching an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride or visiting a wedding show) that it felt difficult to stick to our guns. Will our guests like our choice of craft beer and Babycham over champagne? Is fish and chips an appropriate meal to serve at a wedding? And is getting married in your garden a bit weird? I’m glad to say that these wobbles were fleeting and we are so glad that we made every decision that we did. On the day, we were so excited to share everything with our guests- who we felt so much love from. They were there for us, to celebrate in the way that we wanted to- and I think that was one of the best feelings of all.

We DIY’d almost everything that we could. We knew that this was the way we wanted to do things- but we knew this wasn’t for the faint of heart! All of the decor for the Town Hall (including a few hundred meters of fabric garlands, countless paper pom poms and custom chip forks for every guest)

We designed our own wedding “newspaper” to wrap our fish & chip suppers!

We hired the cutest vintage caravan to have our pre-wedding babycham & Tunnocks teacake party in together (and filled it with biscuit cushions of course!) Later in the day it was used as a photobooth and it went down so well- all of our guests loved it!

By far our best decision was booking Rachel & Tonie of Rachel McNeil Photography to capture our day through their wonderful photography. We had originally seen and loved Rachel’s work on a visit to the DJCAD degree show a few years ago so when she got in touch via an open call for wedding photographers on Instagram, we knew it was meant to be.

Instead of a speech, Michael’s best man Jamie wrote the most incredibly funny and poignant song about us. He recorded a rough version for us (you can listen below) which I play in the office regularly! Find Jamie unplugged on Youtube or on iTunes with his band The Button Men.

We’re just over 4 months into married life. We’ve lived with each other for the last 8 or so years, so not much has changed by way of our daily routines. We’ve each kept our names and I’m pleased to say that we’re not totally skint.

I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re getting themselves into when they start planning a wedding. It’s a whole lot of work, it’s stressful and it’s always more expensive than you think it’s going to be. But we did everything side by side.

Being married has changed us, but not in the way that I thought it would. We felt love from everyone around us in a way that we will remember forever. And we know, that if we can organise a wedding, we can pretty much achieve anything.

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